M83, Saturdays=Youth

French producer Anthony Gonzalez's fourth album sounds much like a bid to soundtrack the next Sofia Coppola movie, combining the triumphal goth-pop of Marie Antoinette, the hormonal swoon of The Virgin Suicides, and the gorgeous blur of Lost in Translation. To call Saturdays=Youth derivative is to pay it a compliment, because every retro synth sounds calibrated to provide the maximum nostalgic rush - if not for your own adolescence, then at least for that of a poetic outcast in a John Hughes film. The chiming, reverbed guitars of Graveyard Girl, or the ricocheting syndrums and ocean-sized dolour of Skin of the Night, are saturated with the teenage melodrama of someone with pictures of the Cure and the Psychedelic Furs taped to their locker door. It's a shame the songwriting evaporates in a haze of rote shoe-gazing and ambient murmurs halfway through. The Molly Ringwald lookalike on the CD sleeve deserved the full 80s-angst monty.